


Bye Week

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: I think I need help I can't stop writing fluff, M/M, Mistaken Twinyard Identity, More Fluff, National Park Visit, Rain/Thunderstorm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 06:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15164960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: Neil comes to visit Andrew in Boston for his bye week, and ends up in Maine instead.  Fluff ensues.





	Bye Week

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta (and the title!). This is for day 3 of Andreil week, even though it's a day late. (Rain/bare skin.) I apologize for all the cavities I'm giving people this week, my brain needs excessive sweetness.

Neil blinked awake when the car door slammed.  He looked around himself blearily; then startled upright.  This was definitely not Andrew’s apartment complex.    
  
He got out of the car.  Tall pines surrounded him and underneath that distinctive scent he caught the tang of salt in the air.  Turning around, he spotted a row of small cabins disappearing into the woods.  There was no sign of Andrew, but a light was on in the biggest cabin so he waited.  
  
Andrew appeared a few minutes later, gesturing towards the car with his chin.  Neil got in, and they drove past the cabins, following the curve in the dirt road until they reached number twelve.  Andrew parked and they both got out; Neil grabbed his duffel and Andrew popped the trunk to pull out a suitcase of his own.  
  
“Where are we?” Neil asked after Andrew let them into the rustic cabin.  There was a small kitchenette and a sizable bedroom with an enormous bed in the center.  Neil dropped his duffel on the floor under one of the windows.  Deer heads gazed down at them from the rough wooden walls.  
  
“Outside Acadia,” Andrew answered.  “Maine,” he added, when Neil looked at him blankly.  
  
Damn.  Neil knew he was tired, but he hadn’t realized he was four-hour-car-trip-without-noticing tired.  “Why are we in Maine?”  
  
“It’s our bye week,” Andrew said flatly.  “We haven’t seen each other in two months.  If we stayed in Boston, you’d insist on going to the fucking court and then I’d have to kill you.”  
  
Neil laughed; Andrew wasn’t wrong.  “So what’s in Acadia?” he asked, stepping closer.  
  
“No exy court, and that’s all that matters.”  Andrew hooked his fingers in the collar of Neil’s shirt and tugged him down for a kiss.  Neil made an embarrassing noise low in his throat but he didn’t even care.  
  
“Did you just abduct me?” he murmured against Andrew’s lips.  
  
“You got in the car willingly,” Andrew said.  “It’s not my fault you’re too stupid to ask where we were going.  You never specified it had to be the apartment.”  
  
Neil hummed and dug his fingers into the short hair on the back of Andrew’s neck.  “Go shower,” Andrew said, breaking the kiss a moment later.  “You smell like airport.”  
  
“I don’t even know what that means,” Neil said, tugging his shirt over his head as he turned towards the bathroom.  When Andrew joined him a minute later, he realized that it didn’t matter that he didn’t know where Acadia actually was; he was home.  
   
*****  
  
It turned out Acadia was a national park.  They had allowed themselves the luxury of sleeping in (and then spent more time in bed decidedly not sleeping), so when they finally drove into the park it was already close to lunchtime.  The twisting road took them through forest that was a mix of pines and other trees, whose leaves were changing to gold and red as the nights lengthened.  The car climbed up Cadillac mountain until they reached the parking lot near the top.    
  
A boardwalk and a rocky path led them to the summit.  The rest of the island dropped below their feet to the water’s edge; the harbor was dotted with small uninhabited islands that looked like a pod of breaching whales from that height.  Neil wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a blue as rich as that water in the sun, especially contrasted with the black underneath the gray clouds in the distance and the green-and-gray of the island.  
  
Andrew had meandered over to a large rocky outcropping and was staring out over the harbor.  Neil pulled out his phone and snapped a picture; the sunlight reflecting off his bright hair looked like candlelight, or a halo.  He laughed at the mental image of Andrew with broad feathered wings, staring unimpressed at St. Peter at the gates of heaven.  
  
The road wound its way down the side of the mountain, turning away from the water then back again.  Andrew pulled into another lot near the bottom.  A narrow, twisting path led down through the woods to a rocky cove.  They picked their way across the rocks, pausing to look at starfish and tiny crabs in the pools nestled in little hollows.  Eventually they found their way to an expanse of unmarked sand.  Neil kicked off his shoes and walked closer to the sea’s edge.  
  
The Atlantic ocean was nothing like the Pacific; even the roar of waves was different.  He had learned over the years to love the deep crashing of water against rock.  Gentle waves lapped at his toes, and he wiggled them deeper into the wet sand.    
  
Behind him, Andrew pulled the sandwiches and sodas they’d snagged at a convenience store out of his backpack and sank onto the dry beach near Neil’s shoes.  After a few minutes of kicking through the foamy water Neil joined him.  The sun was beating down on their shoulders and Neil leaned back on his hands, dropping his head back to squint up into the sky.  “It’s hot for September.”  
  
Andrew made a noncommittal noise as he pulled out his book.  There was nobody else on the beach, so Neil yanked off his shirt and made it into a pillow.  Dropping an arm over his eyes he let himself drift, thinking of Andrew and spending days and weeks and years like this, the two of them alone in the sun.    
  
He woke up when the light began to darken.  “How long was I out?” he asked, sitting up.  
  
“About an hour,” Andrew answered, not looking up from his book.  
  
“But it’s getting dark.”  
  
Andrew pointed at the sky; a huge ominous cloud was creeping overhead.  Neil sighed and stretched while Andrew tucked his book back into the bag then leaned over and kissed Neil.  It started out chaste but didn’t stay that way; Neil lay back down, pulling Andrew on top of him.  “I am not fucking you on a public beach,” Andrew growled.  Neil just buried his fingers in Andrew’s soft hair, kissing him deeper.  
  
The sound of a throat clearing nearby startled them apart.  “Hey, uh, guys,”  the red-faced park ranger said.  “I saw your car up in the lot.  There’s a big storm coming in, and the beach gets a lot of lightning.  You should get back to your car.”  He pointed at a path through the rough grass at the sand’s edge.  “That’ll take you back up to the lot the quickest.”  
  
Neil jumped up to his feet, stopping himself from reaching for his shirt; Andrew followed more slowly.  The ranger nodded at them and started to walk off, then turned back.  “Sorry,” he said, “but aren’t you Neil Josten and Aaron Minyard?”  
  
Andrew’s eyes widened just a fraction before he answered flatly, “Yes.”  Neil coughed to hide his laugh; he couldn’t recall a time since he’d known them that Andrew had ever been mistaken for Aaron.  Usually it was the other way around.  
  
“I am the biggest PSU fan, seriously.  I flew down for the second championship.  Damn, Neil, you’re crazy, man.  That last goal?  Where you bounced it off the backliner and scored on the rebound?  I didn’t even know that was legal!”  It wasn’t, anymore; they’d added that rule after the game.  “It’s not as good since you guys left, though.”  
  
“Thank you,” Neil said.  “It’s, uh, always nice to meet a fan.”  
  
“Can’t believe you’re playing for fucking Denver though.  At least your brother came to Boston,” the ranger said to Andrew.  “What are you doing now?”  
  
“Med school,” Andrew said, not batting an eye.  
  
“Ah, that’s cool.  Anyway, I’ll leave you guys to it.  Just, uh, don’t wait too long, that storm’s gonna hit any minute.”  With a wave, he turned and headed back up the trail.  Neil waited until he was out of earshot before dissolving into laughter.  He was still hiccoughing when the skies opened and rain poured down in fat droplets, drenching them in seconds.    
  
Neil shoved his feet in his shoes and grabbed his shirt and followed Andrew off the beach.  A huge crack echoed behind them and electricity stung the air, crackling over their skin and making Neil’s arm hair stand on end.  The rain flattened it almost immediately, but goosebumps remained.  Andrew glanced back, scanning Neil quickly; the look in his honey-colored eyes made Neil’s heart race.  Another crack, only a little farther off, got his feet moving again.  
  
They were halfway up the path through the woods, Neil a step behind, when he stopped.  Andrew kept walking for a couple of paces before he must have realized Neil was no longer following; he turned back.  “What.”  
  
“Do you ever think about getting married?” Neil asked.  Andrew blinked away the rain that was clinging to his eyelashes but didn’t say anything.  “I do.  I think about it a lot, ever since Jeremy blew out his knee…”  He gave a short laugh.  “No, that’s a lie.  I mean, yeah, the hospital thing is a real consideration, especially since I’m me.  And there’s the whole tax thing, but that’s not really it, you know?”  He was babbling, he knew he was babbling, and Neil never babbled.  “It’s just, I belong to you.  I have since you handed me that key and told me to stay, even if I didn’t know it at first.”  He trailed off when Andrew stepped closer.  
  
“Are you seriously asking me to marry you in the woods in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm?”  
  
“I—yeah, I guess I am.  I want proof that I’m yours.  I want the ring and the paper, just so nobody can ever question it.  But only if you want that too.”  
  
“If I say yes will I get to go back to the car sooner?”  
  
Neil grinned.  “Probably.”  
  
“Then yes, you idiot.”  With that, Andrew turned and headed back up the hill.  Neil followed him, catching him just before the parking lot.  
  
“Yes or no?”  
  
“Get in the fucking car.”  
  
“Yes or no, Drew?”  
  
Andrew glared at him in exasperation.  “I thought if I agreed to marry your dumb ass I’d be able to get out of the rain.”  Neil waited.  “Yes.”  
  
Neil bent down, needing just a quick brush of lips, but Andrew’s mouth was hungrier.  Neil was breathless when they broke apart, and laughing when they finally made it into the car.  Andrew crawled over the console and straddled Neil’s lap.  His hands were hot on Neil’s rain-chilled skin, tracing long-memorized scars while Neil chased the ghosts of raindrops down Andrew’s neck.    
  
Hail started to fall, pinging off the car and pelting the pavement.  Andrew shivered under Neil’s lips and tongue and leaned away.  “Not here.”  He climbed back into the driver’s seat.  “I’m not dealing with that ranger coming back and finding us fucking in the car.”  
  
He dug Neil’s sodden shirt out of the back seat where Neil had thrown it.  Neil made a face at it but pulled it on while Andrew started the car and began driving back to the cabin.  They were on the main road when Neil suddenly laughed.  “What is Aaron going to say when he finds out online that he and I were making out in a national park?”  
  
Andrew hummed and then laughed quietly, beautiful music over the beat of rain against windshield.  Neil leaned back in his seat, gazing at Andrew, content to dream of an impossible future becoming real.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always appreciated; even though I'm slow to reply, they give me life! Or HMU @fuzzballsheltiepants on Tumblr if you want to chat!


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